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Pier Paolo Vergerio The Elder

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LAST MODIFIED: 29 September 2015

DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780195399301-0306

Introduction

Born in Capodistria (then part of the republic of Venice, now in Slovenia) around 1369, Vergerio studied in Padua, Florence, and Bologna and taught logic in Padua before entering Papal service. He was secretary to Popes Innocent VII and Gregory XII and helped organize the Council of Constance before leaving papal service for that of the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund. He died in Budapest in 1444. As one of the third generation of Italian humanists, Vergerio had a respectable career as translator, editor, and author while also serving some of the most powerful men of his day. He is of special interest as a humanist who also had a serious commitment to the church and as one of the key figures in the spread of Italian humanism into eastern and central Europe. (Pier Paolo Vergerio the elder is not to be confused with the eponymous religious reformer of the 16th century, Pier Paolo Vergerio the Younger.

An overview of the life and works of Vergerio in the tradition of late-19th-century Italian intellectual biography, with extensive quotations from Vergerio and his contemporaries. Not easy to find but available online.

Part 1 offers observations on the character and date of Vergerio’s letters, Part 2 surveys Vergerio’s place in church politics during the great schism, and Part 3 contains brief discussions of De ingenuis moribus and Paulus and of Vergerio’s literary relationship with Francesco Zabarella.

An interesting account of Vergerio’s arrest and brief detainment in Venice, placed within the context of the church-state politics of the day. Includes the texts of two relevant documents from Venice’s Archivio di Stato.

A masterful intellectual biography, arguing that Vergerio was “a key member of the third generation of humanists . . . By emphasizing public service through oratory, Vergerio supplied a new matrix for Italian humanism” (p. ix).

Uses Vergerio’s letters, which he was in the process of editing (see Smith 1934, cited under Vergerio’s Letters), to clarify several important points in Vergerio’s biography, with several key documents supplied in an appendix.

Provides biographical information on Leonardi, a Venetian medical humanist, then shows that his relationship with Vergerio was longer and more important than previously believed. An appendix contains a critical edition of a short, newly discovered letter from Vergerio to Leonardi.

Works

Vergerio is best known for his treatise on education, which was widely disseminated in his own day and has been reprinted several times over the last century, but he also wrote an interesting letter collection and a number of other humanistic works, ranging from a popular comedy to works of history and rhetoric.

De ingenuis moribus

Unfortunately the existence of over 300 manuscripts and more than forty early printed editions has complicated the effort to produce a critical edition of Vergerio’s treatise on education, his most popular work. Gnesotto 1917–1918 is still cited regularly, but Gnesotto 1920–1921 can be seen as an acknowledgement by the editor himself that his edition is not fully satisfactory. Miani 1972–1973 rests on ten manuscripts but also cannot be considered definitive. Vergerio 1996 offers a condensed version of the text, while Vergerio 2002 presents a complete English translation.

A good English translation of the Paulus, with the Latin text of Perosa 1983 included. The other four plays in this volume allow Vergerio’s work to be situated within the development of humanist theater in the Renaissance.

A carefully prepared critical edition in which an eighty-page preface on Vergerio’s life and letters is followed by the annotated text of 148 letters and two appendices containing seven shorter works of Vergerio’s and ten documents concerning his life.

Beginning with a careful description and analysis of Pesaro, Biblioteca Oliveriana, MS 44, Zicàri challenges the foundation on which the standard critical edition of Vergerio’s letters (Smith 1934) is based and urges further work on the manuscript tradition.

A critical edition of “Pro redintegranda uniendaque ecclesia,” a speech given in a public consistory of cardinals in Rome after the death of Pope Innocent VII in the hope of ending the Papal schism and improving the general condition of the church.

A critical edition of Vergerio’s treatise on the Carrara family, rulers of Padua in the later Middle Ages, accompanied by a survey of manuscripts and a useful index of people and places mentioned in the text. First published in 1925.

A critical edition of the ten panegyrics to Jerome that Vergerio gave before he left Italy to go to the Council of Constance, with an English translation. The speeches are somewhat repetitive and simplistic, but they constitute an important source for the humanist study of Jerome.

A critical edition of a key text in the tradition that ascribes a special moral and political character to the city of Venice, accompanied by a lengthy introduction arguing that the basic elements of this vision were solidly established in the Middle Ages.

A facsimile edition of Vergerio’s history of the Carrara rulers of Padua, accompanied by a translation into Italian. Useful primarily for the translation, which makes the text accessible to those whose Latin is not adequate for Gnesotto’s critical edition.

Italian Humanism

Although Vergerio’s birthplace is now in Slovenia (see Humanism in Eastern and Central Europe), it was under Venetian control in the 14th century, with King 1986 and Lazzarini 1980 offering an orientation to the intellectual environment in which Vergerio matured. Vergerio’s relationship to Petrarch, who had spent some time in Venice, was crucial to his development: he wrote a biography of him (Aurigemma 1977) and prepared an influential edition of his epic poem, the Africa (Busjan 2011 and Fera 1984).

A careful examination of how Vergerio selected carefully from the material in Petrarch’s Posteritati to construct a biography that corresponds to what he felt was most important in the life and works of his subject.

Places Vergerio’s use of Petrarch’s autobiographical “Letter to Posterity” in the introduction to his edition of the Africa into a larger discussion of the structure and purpose of the letter and its afterlife in the 16th century.

A detailed study of Vergerio’s edition of Petrarch’s Africa, establishing that Vergerio preserved the variants of the author himself and the conjectures offered by Coluccio Salutati on the text of the first humanist epic poem.

The standard study of the development and character of humanism in the republic in which Vergerio was born. Does not deal much with Vergerio directly but is invaluable as a study of his general intellectual environment.

A careful study of the years 1381 to 1405, when the patriciate adopted humanism and produced a characteristically Venetian form of it. Provides background for the environment in which Vergerio’s thought developed.

Humanism in Eastern and Central Europe

Vergerio was born near the Adriatic Sea where the modern countries of Italy, Slovenia, and Croatia come together; his birthplace, the city of Capodistria, was then part of the Republic of Venice but is now Koper, Slovenia. De Totto 1937 gives useful information on the important families of Capodistria, while Branca and Graciotti 1983 and Budiša 1988 offer an orientation to the humanist culture of the area. Vergerio passed his final years in Hungary, with Birnbaum 1988 and Koltay-Kastner 1939 providing the background for his work there and Banfi 1939 focusing more precisely on Vergerio.

An important effort by a scholar conversant with both Italian and Hungarian scholarship to interpret Vergerio’s activities in Hungary and to delineate his importance for the diffusion of Italian humanism in central Europe. Article concludes in Volume 2 (1940), pp. 1–30.

A volume of essays on humanism in Istria, the region east of Italy where Vergerio was born. Useful as background and for information on the nexus of relationships that Vergerio maintained throughout his life.

A detailed overview of humanism in Hungary as a phenomenon strongly influenced by its Italian origins. Useful as background for the environment in which Vergerio passed his final years and for access to relevant bibliography in Hungarian.

Humanism and the Disciplines

As Paul Oskar Kristeller showed many years ago, humanist activity was focused in several key disciplines. Fisher 1987 and Robey 1969 explore Vergerio’s work in poetry, Tournoy 2006 focuses on historiography, and McManamon 1982 and Witt 2000 explore Vergerio’s impact on the history of rhetoric. Bolland 1996 extends the discussion to art, where the humanist contribution has been attracting increased scholarly attention.

Places Vergerio’s comments on imitation into the intellectual and artistic environment of early Renaissance Padua, by noting affinities with how this topic was treated by Cennino Cennini and Francesco Petrarca.

Explores three reactions to Carlo Malatesta’s destruction of Virgil’s statue in order to construct an early humanist theory of literature, with Vergerio’s being important as a theory of signs and how they relate to poetry. An important article.

Relying on De ingenuis moribus and on his corpus of surviving speeches, McManamon argues that Vergerio moved the emphasis from the secondary applications of rhetoric in medieval works to speechmaking and recovered from classical theorists a broad understanding of the discipline as embracing all three rhetorical genres in the Renaissance.

A study of a letter discovered by Ludwig Bertalot that was associated with Carlo Malatesta’s attack on Virgil’s statue in Mantua, an event that stimulated defenses of poetry by Vergerio and Leonardo Bruni. Robey challenges Bertalot’s attribution of the letter to Vergerio.

A brief discussion of Vergerio’s translation of Arrian, an author unknown in the West until the Quattrocento. Vergerio’s translation is shown to have been used by Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini. Contains extracts from three letters of Piccolomini’s that are relevant to the discussion.

As part of an influential revisionist study that pushes the origins of humanism back before Petrarch, Witt stresses Vergerio’s importance in the history of rhetoric, arguing that “Vergerio’s first works constitute the earliest public presentation of humanist oratory” (p. 374).

Educational Theory

Vergerio has been best known, in his day and in ours, for his treatise on education. Iachino 1894 provides a good initial overview, while Pierantoni 1920 goes into more detail, and Garin 1976 places Vergerio’s treatise into the broader history of humanist educational theory. Calò 1939 and Robey 1981 explore the immediate context in which De ingenuis moribus was composed, while Saitta 1928 and Robey 1980 offer contrasting interpretations of Vergerio’s views on the relationship between education and the civic life.

After a brief overview of Vergerio’s life and works, Pierantoni provides a detailed synopsis of Vergerio’s educational theories, followed by a chapter comparing those theories to medieval writings on education. Also contains an appendix with the text of the Paulus.

Questions the argument put forth by Saitta 1928 and Garin 1976 that Vergerio’s treatise emphasizes the importance of education for the formation of the citizen, an interpretation that Robey feels is often wrongly extended to a broader civic interpretation of humanist education as a whole.

Notes affinities between the educational theories of Vergerio and the practices of Vittorino da Feltre, which Robey attributes to a common period of study at the University of Padua and a mutual friendship with Giovanni Conversino da Ravenna.

Politics

Marchente 1946 argues that Vergerio’s history of the Carrara princes is of value primarily as a record of the author’s political thought and not as an historical source. At the end of the 20th century, a lively debate arose over the nature of that political thought. Baron 1966 claimed Vergerio as a representative of a republican-oriented civic humanism, while Robey 1973, Robey 1983, and Kohl 2007 view him as sympathetic to seigneurial rule.

Baron, Hans. The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance: Civic Humanism and Republican Liberty in an Age of Classicism and Tyranny. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1966.

Places Vergerio within the development of civic humanism in early Renaissance Italy, arguing that an initial enthusiasm for an actively engaged republicanism on the Roman model yielded to a pro-monarchical stance in Vergerio’s later life. See pp. 126–134.

Argues that De principibus Carrariensibus, along with Giovanni Conversini da Ravenna’s Familie Carrariensis natio, should be valued not as modern historical documents but as efforts to bolster the legitimacy and grandeur of Padua’s ruling family, similar to other histories of princely regimes in the Renaissance.

Argues that the De principibus is essentially a pastiche of extracts taken from other authors, which robs the work of value as a historical source but leaves it as a record of the author’s political thought.

Religion

As Zanotti 1911 shows, Vergerio at one time contemplated a career in the church, with Kiséry 2009 exploring his activity in church politics and McManamon 1985 examining the effect of Vergerio’s humanist activity in the area of religion.

Kiséry, Zsuzsanna. “Raising the Dead to Raise the Money for the Living.” In Strategies of Remembrance: From Pindar to Hölderin. Edited by Lucie Doležalová, 185–200. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars, 2009.

Discusses Vergerio’s letter marking the death of Cardinal Francesco Zabarella, showing how Vergerio honored his friendship with the deceased even though they were on opposite sides of the debate over the papal election at the Council of Constance.

Argues that Vergerio used a classical epideictic oration to present a picture of Jerome as an exponent of humanist learning, thereby affecting in both medium and message how the cult of Jerome would develop among Renaissance humanists.